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No sooner is a child walking and talking than the ABCs and 1-2-3s give way to the full-on alphabet soup: the ERBs, the OLSAT, the IQ, the NCLB for AYP, the IEP for ELLs, the CHAT and PDDST for ASD or LD and G&T or ADD and ADHD, the PSATs, then the ACTs and SATsall designed to assess and monitor a child's readiness for education. In many public schools, students are spending up to 28% of instructional time on testing and test prep.
Starting this year, the introduction of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in 45 states will bring an unprecedented level of new, more difficult, and longer mandatory tests to nearly every classroom in the nation up to five times a yearforcing our national testing obsession to a crisis point. Taxpayers are spending extravagant money on these testsup to ,1.4 billion per yearand excessive tests are stunting children s spirits, adding stress to family life, and slowly killing our country s future competitiveness. Yet even so, we still want our kids to score off the charts on every test they take, in elementary school and beyond. And there will be a lot of them.
How do we preserve space for self-directed learning and development, while also asking our children to make the score and make a mark? This book is an exploration of that dilemma, and a strategy for how to solve it.
"The Test" explores all sides of this problemwhere these tests came from, why they're here to stay, and ultimately what you as a parent or teacher can do. It introduces a set of strategies borrowed from fields as diverse as games, neuroscience, social psychology, and ancient philosophy to help children do as well as they can on tests, and, just as important, how to use the experience of test-taking to do better in life. Like Paul Tough s bestseller "How Children Succeed," it illuminates the emerging science of grit, curiosity and motivation, but takes a step further to explore innovations in educationemerging solutions to the over-testing crisisthat are not widely known but that you can adapt today, at home and at school. And it presents the stories of families of all kinds who are maneuvering within and beyond the existing educational system, playing and winning the testing game. You ll learn, for example, what Bill Gates, a strong public proponent of testing, does to stoke self-directed curiosity in his children, and how Mackenzie Bezos, wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and mother of three, creates individualized learning experiences for each of her children.
All parents want their children to be successful, and their schools to deliver true opportunities. Yet these goals are often as likely to result in stress and arguments as actual progress. "The Test" is a book to help us think about these problems, and ultimately, move our own children towards the future we want for them, from elementary to high school and beyond.
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Review Quotes
1. The [anti-testing] movement now has a guidebook. It s publication could hardly have been better timed. to characterize it as simply a polemic would be to overlook the sophistication of Kamenetz s thinking. The book s most urgent contribution is its exploration of how we might hold our schools, teachers and students accountable if we were to scrap high stakes standardized testing entirely. As in her previous book, DIY U, Kamenetz is open to seemingly radical, technology-driven solutions. "New York Times Book Review"
Thorough research and illuminating interviews... With abundant data assembled in an accessible format, the book is a must-read for anyone in the educational system or any parent who has a child old enough to enter preschool An informative and enlightening appraisal of the regimented tests that American schoolchildren of all ages are subjected to taking on a regular basis. "Kirkus Review"
High stakes testing in our public schools puts enormous pressure on everyone in the system. Using real and often quite moving stories, Anya Kamenetz shows teachers, parents, administrators, and students how to survive, even thrive, in an education system that many understandably believe needs a course correction. Daniel H. Pink, author of "Drive" and "To Sell is Human"
Anya Kamenetz's "The Test" is a fearless expose of how testing permeates our schools, our homes, even kids' psyches. People will be talking about this important, provocative book for years to come. Ashley Merryman, co-author of "NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children" and "Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing"
A must-read. The Test is a vital contribution to the growing debate about how to evaluate our students, schools, and teachers. And Kamenetz offers invaluable guidance to the people so often caught in the middle: parents. Tony Wagner, author of "The Global Achievement Gap" and "Creating Innovators"
"The Test" is a brilliant, passionate, insightful, and useful look at America s destructive obsession with high stakes testing. Anya Kamanetz yet again shows why she is one of America s truly original thinkers on how we should be educating the next generation and how we are failing. If I still believed in grades after reading this book, I d give The Test an A+. Cathy N. Davidson, author of "Now You See It" and Distinguished Professor and Director, The Futures Initiative
"[Kamenetz] digs deep into the business practices that govern current testing systems and policy...[she] offers several strategies to keep students balanced and calm while preparing for such exams. "Publishers Weekly"
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